1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer program, method, and apparatus for allocating IT resources to users. More particularly, the present invention relates to a reservation management program stored in a computer-readable medium, reservation management method, and reservation management apparatus for allocating resources in a grid computing environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Grid computing is known as a technology that organizes many computers connected to a network to provide high-speed data processing services. Client entities of a grid computing system are allowed to use necessary processing resources (IT resources) that the system offers.
One of the key issues in the grid computing is how to allocate IT resources efficiently to clients. Some researchers have proposed a job scheduler that makes a tentative reservation for resources prior to job scheduling. The proposed technique permits the system to keep track of resource reservations, as well as to choose an optimal combination of resources. See, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2004-302748.
One of the responsibilities of a system administrator is to reserve IT resources necessary for execution of a client's business application. To aid this task, some software programs of a business grid computing system offer a brokering service that allocates optimal IT resources to client applications according to their requirements as to what resources are needed and when they should be available. The broker has not only to satisfy the conditions specified by the system administrator, but also to maximize the efficiency of IT resource usage. For efficient use of IT resources, the broker is supposed to reduce idle time of resources and accept as many reservation requests as possible.
There have, however, been no established algorithms for realizing efficient resource allocation in a grid computing environment. The technique disclosed in the aforementioned patent application does not necessarily make full use of resources since it primarily aims at preventing resource reservations from failing repeatedly.